


Dream of the Ones Who Came Before

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Gen, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a good answer, an honest answer. It’s just not the full answer. These children are far too young to hear such sad stories as the ones you and your siblings keep in your heads. How do you explain to ones so young that when you were their age, you met someone special? How does one tell a story of a crush that lives in your heart even now because it had no time to grow and even now it sometimes makes your soul ache when you think of how things might have been?</p><p>Or --</p><p>Twenty years after the deaths at Erebor, Tilda still has feelings about her very first crush and finds that she cannot get him out of her mind or out of her heart even though he never knew that he had caught her thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream of the Ones Who Came Before

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyrics from "Last of Days" by A Fine Frenzy

_The world carries on without you_  
_But nothing remains the same_  
_I'll be lost without you_  
_Until the last of days_

 

It’s an innocent question from one of your favorite people in the world, but it still catches you off guard and fills you with a sharp sense of pain. 

_“Why haven’t you ever gotten married, Aunt Tilda?”_

You close your eyes as you try to get your emotions under control so that they do not show on your face as you try to decide how to best answer the question of your oldest nephew. Even so, you are not quick enough to miss the flash of pain in your sister’s eyes or the indrawn breath of your brother.

_“I suppose it is because I have never met anyone that I love as much as I love my work and my travels.”_

It is a good answer, an honest answer. It’s just not the full answer. These children are far too young to hear such sad stories as the ones you and your siblings keep in your heads. How do you explain to ones so young that when you were their age, you met someone special? How does one tell a story of a crush that lives in your heart even now because it had no time to grow and even now it sometimes makes your soul ache when you think of how things might have been?

You are a king’s daughter and a king’s sister and you would have traded all of that if...

If.

Such a small word that has so many thorns and paths to wind your way through.

If.

A small word, but one that has shaped so much of your life since the very first time you met those thirteen dwarves that your Da brought into your house when you were so young. Those thirteen dwarves that needed help and that were going to claim their home back from the dragon.

The dragon that destroyed your childhood home and killed so many. The dragon that...

But that’s getting off of the topic of your thoughts and you try to center yourself again. It has been so many years and still the pain is there. A pain that when you were younger people told you to let go of and ignore because you had been far too young to know anything about love and everything that comes with it. The pain that you had to hide because no one but your family believed that even as young as you were, you were drawn to him and have never been able to forget his face.

When the children have all gone to bed, you sit, staring into the fire. You feel your sister come to one side of you and you feel your brother come up behind you and wrap his arms around you.

“It grieves me to know that it still hurts you so, Tilda.” 

Bain’s voice is soft and full of understanding. He and your father had always been two of the very few men who never talked down to you about your wishes and your dreams from when you were young. The only other males who seemed to understand even a little bit as much as your family did have been the elves that you have made friends with over the years.

The dwarves are the ones who understand far too much about your thoughts and your confusions.

“It is all right, my brother.” You try to keep your voice even, but your siblings know you far too well for your own good sometimes. “Some things are not meant to be and we walk our paths the best way that we know how to.”

“If Thorin had not died I could kill him myself for the pain that you have shouldered all of these years.” Sigrid’s voice is fierce and you wince because Sigrid knows far too much about the pain you feel. After all, she loved once before, too, and she lost her first love as well.

“We should not carry anger for the dead, Sigrid,” you hear yourself saying and she frowns. 

“How can you defend him? He brought ruin down on our home. He led Fili and Kili into a senseless death.”

Now. Now the tears you had managed to fight back all night burn at your eyes. You had done so well until his name was spoken.

“I do not defend him or his actions.” Your voice shakes only slightly. “But I refuse to let my anger and sadness he has caused me taint my heart after all of these years.”

It’s hard, so very hard for you to say that because there has been so many times over the years that you have raged against that king’s memory and his actions after he got to his damned mountain. In your heart and mind, he killed the man you have not been able to forget as sure as if he had been the orcs that stabbed him.

Yes. You know how Kili and Fili died. You have great friends among the dwarves in Erebor and a few times before she traveled elsewhere, you had long conversations with Tauriel. King Dain has been very good to your people and you spend a great deal of time in Erebor when your travels bring you back home to Dale.

Bofur and Oin still have special places in your heart and they have always been happy to share stories of Kili from when he was the age you were when the dwarves changed your life so much. You would be friends with them even if they hadn’t done so much to save you and your siblings after Smaug attacked Lake Town.

“How do you do it, Sigrid?” Bain tightens his arms around your waist when you ask the question you have always wondered. “How have you been able to deal with your pain enough to love again and have children? I know I was far too young for things, but the idea of being with anyone else fills me with dread that I can never get past.” You swallow. “How is it that the memory of a feeling I had for such a short time when I was so young have gotten so deeply into my psyche that I wish I could see him again?”

It is not the first time the three of you have spoken of Fili and Kili. Your sister better than anyone understands your questions and the confusion you have carried all of your life. Bain lets go of you and moves over to sink to the floor in front of the sofa that you and Sigrid are sitting on near the fireplace.

“You remember what Tauriel and some of the others have told us over the years,” your sister says softly, reaching to grasp your hand. “Oin. Bofur and Dain have explained it to us many times. It doesn’t matter how young you are when you meet your One. It always affects you and they will always be with you.” She swallows. “I love my husband, you know I do. But I still see Fili in my mind and I feel him in my soul. I miss him so much sometimes that it is a physical pain, but I had to keep moving forward and I knew that I had to one day marry and do my duty for Dale.”

“Da never pressured us to marry.”

Even when his council members tried to force his hand and get him to marry his daughters off to princes of other lands and territories, Bard had stood firm. His children would not wed with anyone unless it was your choice to do so. There had been far too many years where you had not had the choices that he would have liked for you to have and he would not force you to sacrifice your happiness and your desires for anyone.

Sigrid smiled sadly and nodded. “No, he did not. He shielded and defended us when people would have tried to force him to use us for their own gain.”

“It helped that we are friends with an army of dwarves and an army of elves,” Bain said, giving you both a small smile. “Dain and Thranduil both told him that if the people got too forceful, they would be happy to remind them that the dwarves and elves formed an alliance with Bard and not the grasping people that thought they were in control of something that they had not been here to fight for.”

“I believe that Dwalin and Gloin would have been happy to lead that kind of fight.” There is humor in your sister’s eyes at the thought of the friends that have so far been there for the last several years of your lives leading an army to protect all of you from having to do anything you did not want to do. “But, as I was saying, I knew that I had a duty to our family if we were going to keep strengthening Dale and our rights here. I would not have wed anyone that I did not want to and Navean has always been a good man and very loyal to our father and us.”

“But Fili?” Your question is still there because you want to understand and you want to know if this ache in your own heart will ever go away or if you will miss him until your own death.

It has been twenty years or more since you met them and then they died in the Battle of the Five Armies, after all. 

Sigrid sighs and now you see a sheen of tears in her eyes that matches the one your beloved siblings see in yours. “I miss him every day and I always wonder what could have been if Thorin --” Here, your sister shudders and swallows a few times, trying to push back her anger at the dead king. “Navean knows all about Fili and how I felt about him even though we only knew each other for a few days. He does not hold that love against me and he knows that I have ever been loyal and loving to him.”

“People say there is something wrong with me,” you admit softly. “I know that you and Da have always tried to shield me from the words, but I still hear them. They say that something is wrong with my mind because I miss a dwarf that I only knew for a few days when I was eight years old.”

There is an anger burning in your brother’s eyes and there is sadness there, too. You know how much he has tried to protect you from the bitter tongues of the people of Dale that just don’t have the capacity to understand. 

“Those people can go rot themselves.” Bain’s words are quiet, but there is a hot rage that you know could explode if any of those close-minded people were within range now. “I wasn’t fond of Thorin, but the others were nothing but good to us. I remember how Oin, Bofur and Fili fought the orcs that attacked us after Thorin took the others to Erebor. Kili did his best to fight for us even though he was in no condition to be on his feet.”

“They never knew that we cared about them.” 

This, this is one of the things that has hurt you most over the years. Fili and Kili didn’t know before they died that two human girls of Lake Town cared about them as themselves and not as dwarves that would bring gold and jewels to Lake Town or later to Dale. Bofur, Oin and the others are very well aware of what regard your family holds them in, but Fili and Kili never got the chance to know that there were people of men that valued them and would have liked to get to know them better.

“I like to think that wherever they are now that they watch us and they know Tilda.” Sigrid reaches up to wipe the tears from your cheek that you don’t even realize you were shedding as you talk with the people dearest to you in this world. “That is what helps me get through the days and the pain when it hits me unexpectedly.”

Bain’s lips quirk in a small smile. “Balin has told us all about the halls of their creator, Mahal. Maybe as they wait there for their great world’s remaking, they can observe us and know that they did not leave this world without the love and care of people who were touched by them.”

That makes you smile slightly in return. Your brother is not known for his poetry outside of the family, but he has a creative and loving soul. There have been many a nights that he has sang and recited things for you and your sister when you have needed his guidance and his strength.

You look down at your hands folded tightly in your lap and fight to keep the tears from increasing. “I miss him. I miss him and his smile so much. I was eight years old and someone that was seventy years older than me affected me in ways that he will never know.”

It was because of him and the stories his Company told that led you to learning how to use a bow, after all. The dwarves taught you how to hunt and shoot and fight -- when Thranduil’s elves weren’t doing the same thing. Because of your friends and allies, you and your siblings have turned out to be quite the warriors when you need to be.

No one can train with Dwalin and not become a warrior. He doesn’t suffer fools and he promised Bard that you would know how to defend yourself in case there were ever any attacks of from the orcs and their dark allies again.

That training has served to make your siblings feel more at ease when you go traveling without them.

“Dain sent a message to us while your were sleeping from your journey, Tilda,” Bain said with a gentle smile. “They have gifts that they would like us to come get from them at our convenience. I believe that Dori and his guild have created something for us all that only we alone among men would treasure.”

You have a pretty good idea of what those gifts could be for. You are almost of an age where as a dwarf you would be celebrating coming of age and being gifted with special items from your friends and family. Bofur and Oin had told you this for years and even though you told them that you needed no gifts of that way from them, they have always just smiled and continued on their way. The ages of humans and dwarves may differ in the ways of counting, but not in the things that are important.

You and your siblings were in Dale fighting in your own ways when the orcs attacked the city, after all. In the eyes of your dwarven friends, you three are every bit the warriors that you claim you are not.

“In the morning we’ll send a message to Dain and the Company, then,” you say, knowing that spending time at the mountain would probably be good for you after your last journey. “Letting them know that we will come at whatever time they would like us to arrive.”

Maybe spending time with your dwarvish friends and family would assist in alleviating this sorrow that seems to be weighing you down so much on this night.

Being with others who loved Kili will surely comfort you for a little while.


End file.
